Archive for March, 2016

It’s wonderful to find companies whose ethical business culture shines at all levels. It is something every business can do with the right training and oversight that leads by example. There are so many ways a small mistake turns out to be not so small. A new way to learn the ins and outs of making the right ethical business decisions is through creating an environment of trust and playing the e-FactorGame. By gamifying the material, it becomes much more engaging and fun to reestablish a higher set of business values. By introducing interesting dilemmas, everyone works towards ironing out the best ethical decisions. Understanding and implementation of ethical values take hold. All stakeholders benefit, employees, staff, executives, and the →

The early formative years is the time in sports that character is built. Coaches are chosen for their ability to build teams that win, yet ethics of fair play and sportsmanship are important whether on either end of winning or losing. Sometimes, the first string of starters get blown out of a game. A coach can keep the starters in, or give the second string the chance to prove themselves. It may look like the coach has given up and let the benchwarmers play. But, in the face of overwhelming odds against you, every benchwarmer’s character and attitude to show what they can really do shows up and outscores the higher rated opposition. Win or lose, the ethics of sportsmanship →

Computers will face that fork in the road when a decision must be made between one path not being as bad as the other. Choosing among bad outcomes based on making moral decisions could be part of what engineers must grapple with in designing driverless cars for example. This comes down to designing and deciding what is the right set of constraints and algorithms that best resolve life and death conflicts for a machine. Can machines be programmed to make ethical decisions? Nowadays, when computer systems select from among different courses of action, they engage in a kind of decision-making process. The ethical dimensions of this decision-making are largely determined by the values engineers incorporate into the systems, either →

The impressionable years seem to come earlier and carry on into early adulthood. Those photoshopped bodies showcasing ideal body types plays on the psyche, of how people see themselves and internalize it. Is it moral to make fantasy the reality, that wearing the same will make you feel like a million. Or, does recognition of one’s own reality set in, that you’ll never measure up to the image of the perfect world. Is it dishonest or unethical to influence consumers with false images of perfection in order to sell? Is there anything altruistic or of social value in shaping perceptions? The potential harm these photos in media popularizing the “perfect” body type through retouching can bring has not been lost →